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Most of us, it seems, define our political orientation as liberal or conservative, often with a “moderate” caveat. But what do we mean by that, really? I am afraid that these labels have taken a real beating in recent decades, with the result that they have lost most of their meaning, if not all.

Wither Liberalism?

Let’s start with “liberal.” For a good while now, the word “liberal” has taken on the aura of an almost dirty word. Do you listen to talk radio or Fox News (which I prefer to call “Fixed News,” or “Fake News,” since it so heavily indulges not just in a particular political bias but also in falsehoods, innuendo, and ignoring facts, just like the president who follows it so closely)? There you will hear “liberal” used only scornfully. But, who are liberals, really?

Chris Hedges, in his 2010 book, Death of the Liberal Class, argues forcefully that the liberal class has abandoned its traditional political values, retaining only the name and rhetoric. The Democratic Party was once the bastion of liberal policies. However, through the latter half of the 20th Century, business interests controlled more and more of electoral politics as well as legislation itself.

Corporate interests and money-have long since taken control of the Democratic Party. Democratic politicians continued to spout liberal slogans. But they actually represented the corporate and investor classes as measured by most of their voting in both the House and Senate. Actual liberal citizens repeatedly came away frustrated by the party’s failure to implement liberal values touted in electoral campaigns. Thus, it is not surprising that while the views of a majority of Americans are generally liberal, the voting turnout in the U.S. is among the lowest of the industrialized nations.

Wither Conservatism?

So, similarly, what do we mean by the term, “conservative”? Well, here we have a different conundrum. “Conservative” has not taken on the negative connotations of “liberal.” However, the force of corporatized politics in the U.S. has similarly damaged it.

Proud Conservative

Most of us have some conservative values and some liberal values as well. We value stability and responsibility in our fellow citizens and try to represent them in our own behavior. We don’t always succeed, but we try. The political buzzword, “law and order” has exploited our conservative character by instilling the fear that criminals and others of questionable repute threaten the stability and security of our lives.

You might think that the conservative and liberal labels reflect directions of political, economic, and social policy favored by citizens who identify with those labels. You might also think that politicians who identify themselves by those labels attempt to implement policies that reflect those values. But, you would be wrong. Labels are often cover stories used by politicians to justify their actions, which may have entirely other sources.

The politicians gain their campaign contributions and other largess from mostly corporate lobbyists. Of course, the lobbyists advocate for political interests that benefit from the policy choices they persuade (bribe) senators and representatives to make. And, where do liberal or conservative values fit into this picture? Well, they don’t, really.

Rise of the Corporate State

In an extremely important, though not widely known study, Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page found that over many years, legislation favored the interests of corporate and business groups that lobbied politicians. The expressed interests of ordinary citizens and citizen groups representing the public interest rarely found expression in legislation. Their report, “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens,” Perspectives on Politics 12:3 (September 2014):564-581, provides strong empirical evidence that “economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.”

In this context, it is difficult to surmise that the conservative and liberal ideas have any role in politics other than as cover stories to curry the favor of voters who identify with those labels. They certainly do not predict more than superficially the voting behavior of most politicians who use them.

“According to polls, most Americans think the nation is more divided than it’s been since the Civil War. And these divides are getting worse…”

Really? Exactly what divides America? Well, there are polls and there are polls. In November 2016, a Gallup poll suggested shortly after Trump’s election that 77% of the people perceived the nation as divided. Certainly, if you watch Fox News, MSNBC, CNN, the traditional networks, or participate in social media, you can easily get that impression. Conflict makes the news. Certainly, the nation is going through some major changes, some of which produce more denial than contemplation. That tends to escalate the ‘blame game.’

Nostalgia for imagined “good old days” leads many to wish to “Make America Great Again.” Generational losses of income and status breed fear, resentment and anger. Trump has deftly exploited such fears and resentments, inciting anger and even violence among his base of mostly working and former middle-class white males and some of the women who love them.

We hear formerly politically incorrect expressions of racism, sexism, and xenophobia uttered more openly now in public and semi-public arenas. However, it seems clear that many of the voters who put Obama in office also voted for Trump. That may seem crazy, but it was a complex electoral dynamic that would take many pages just to describe no less explain.

Institutional Divisions by Racism

Did we really become that divided between presidents? Well, of course, the big political division between Obama Democrats and the racist Republican Congress of his second term has grown wider and wider, resulting in unprecedented partisan practices that border on violating at least the spirit of the Constitution.

Is it really that the American people are so divided, or is the actual division between the growing power of the corporate state in conflict with the public interest in seeking a safer more livable world for the American people? Establishment Democrats like to treat Trump as an anomaly, an outlier so bizarre that he does not fit into the standard assortment of political positions.

To be sure, Trump’s impulses are weird and vastly ignorant of national norms of the political process, civil behavior, and the constitutional constraints on his pretentions to unlimited personal power. He blatantly exposes his racism, misogyny, and narcissism in daily Tweets. But is that so different from the perverse behavior of those old white men on the Senate Judiciary Committee who dismiss the entirely credible story of Dr. Christine Blaisey Ford as they did decades before with Anita Hill?

Chuck Grassley ~ HuffPost

Political operative Brett Kavanagh would surely guarantee a plutocratic majority on the Supreme Court. He represents the same culture of elitist white male entitlement to power embodied in Chuck Grassley, Orrin Hatch, and Lindsay Graham. For Trump, it is a matter of protection from prosecution even more than plutocracy; for the senators, it is a matter of achieving the corporatist goals of their PACs to dominate the federal government by executive action as well as voter suppression.

Plutocratic Unity and the Veil of Division

Trump’s policy choices – however dangerous in international relations for example – fit well with the notion that his presidency is the logical extension of the trends of the corporate state over several decades, whichever party was in power. The cooperation of Senate Democrats in the unconstitutional Republican wars of choice, just like the bailouts for Wall Street criminals of 2008, but not for their victims, reflects the unity of the plutocrats that underlies and belies surface “party differences.”

One might even conclude that the great divide today is between the people and a federal government that now almost entirely serves the interest of corporate elites and the super-rich. Despite the distortions of demagoguery, the trends now deeply entrenched in the corporate state run counter to some of the most basic of American values.

Because of the dominance of corporate money in national politics, federal elected officials are less and less connected to the people they are supposed to represent. The “Citizens United” Supreme Court decision and the injection of blatant representatives of corporate polluters as executives in the EPA along with sweeping executive orders unwind decades of gradual improvement in modest environmental protections. Abandoning our commitment to the international agreement to limit Iran’s nuclear capabilities, like many other actions, runs counter to the interests of the public in safety, security; others constrain the ability of average Americans to earn a decent living.

The demagoguery, confusion, anger, and resentment run high and as usual in such situations, a charlatan who Michael Moore terms a master of performance art. Trump deftly turned that resentment toward scapegoating vulnerable minority populations, including refugees, in order to energize the base of those who resent their losses of status and income under the policies of the same corporate state he serves. The falsely generated divisions among the people conceal a much deeper divide.

No, the real division in America is between the plutocrats and the people.

Resistance seems necessary, though clearly, it is not sufficient. What will resistance get us, really?

A slower unraveling of American Democracy? Maybe, but not much slower. Democracies die not so much by military coup but by slow erosion of crucial institutions such as the courts and the press. The anti-democratic forces of the corporate state have gathered unprecedented power and the awareness of the people remains dominated by the ideology of industrial-consumerism, reinforced by the rise of extreme demagoguery. We are in the perfect anti-democratic storm.

Perhaps one or two less weather weirdings next year? Probably not. Any slowing of climate chaos is a long-term project requiring massive action now. That is just not happening. The stronger the scientific evidence – even accelerated intensified draughts and epic rainfall, tropical storms, arctic ice-melt, and rising sea level happening now – the greater the political denial. Prior modest U.S. governmental efforts to reduce carbon emissions rapidly wind down as I write.

So Much to Resist, So Few Tools

Maybe resistance can ease the splitting of our society into the extremely rich and the rest of us? Perhaps, but again, such a project faces centrally organized power, massive institutional momentum, and highly leveraged financial control. The concentration of wealth and the plunder of the planet continue unabated. Street protests are mostly catharsis, yet bring on escalated military police arrests and violence.

Maybe resistance could achieve a slight improvement in the deteriorating health of our people due to abridged access to healthcare by the Corporate State. Well, that is not likely in the short run, since it will take a lot more than empty rhetoric by Corporate Democrats if they regain control of Congress. The Dem’s are still beholden to the Wall Street financial elites who want to keep their free ride while the people suffer. What incentive do the Dem’s have to overthrow the monopoly of medical insurance corporations and Big Pharma that feed their campaign coffers? Wall Street and K Street keep them flush, after all.

Well, at least we might hope for a concerted effort to accelerate climate action, right? But again, Mr. Big Corp is likely to be running more hi-tech R&D programs, chasing illusions of “geo-engineering,” possibly the greatest hubris of all. The corporate elite is not likely to accelerate deployment of ready-to-go no-patent-monopoly distributed power generation and energy conservation strategies. Climate-appropriate technologies and policies do not offer monopoly power or vast corporate profits. Those would involve some degree of community control replacing endless corporate-state intermediation assuring further central control and human suffering.

Something Very Different

No, we need something very different now. “But you don’t know what it is, do you Mister Jones?” That is exactly the point today. Humanity has entered uncharted waters and we don’t even know our ship that well. Furthermore, our ship was not rigged for these waters. We are in the Anthropocene and few have even heard the term. Most do not grasp the fact that things really are different now. No political authority has even come close to acknowledging this reality.

Well, I can tell you one thing. What we need even more than resistance is replacement of the industrial-consumer economy and rapid restoration of local and regional ecosystems worldwide. Only then can we create the human resilience that we cannot achieve quickly through national politics or street protests before full-on climate collapse accelerates hyper-weird weather, large scale crop failures, forced migrations, escalated violence and imminent societal collapse.

So, resistance must transform itself if it is to extend its meaning and value beyond mere protest, even massive political protest in the streets. Momentary disruptions of the authoritarian illusions of the political-economic elites (whose denial of reality serves their short term interests) will not measurably improve our chances of re-stabilizing the Earth System as we enter the Anthropocene.

Resistance to the environmental and human destruction of the global industrial-consumer economy can only succeed by transforming itself. Resistance must take the form of positive concrete actions to restore local ecosystems, and by extension the whole Earth system. We must resist by creating viable zero-emissions community economies. In doing so, we will naturally withdraw participation in the giant technosphere that now deeply intermediates all human action in the material world, damaging all life on the planet.

We must take direct community actions to re-establish harmonious relations with our local and regional ecosystems. For example, viable farm-to-table food systems, by their very establishment, resist and diminish giant corporate systems of global intermediation and centralized control of localities. We must eliminate the complex institutional intermediation of every aspect of our lives. Creativity and innovation within communities may become the greatest form of resistance.

Over 20,000 scientists from 184 countries have now signed on to the second warning by scientists to humanity to dial down its profligate destruction of the ecosystems and environments upon which we all depend. In a short paper, World scientists’ warning to humanity: A second notice, the writers of the second warning (the first was in 1992 and had little effect) initially garnered nearly 15,000 signatures of scientists endorsing the paper. Soon, the total number of scientists signed on exceeded 20,000. So, What’s the big deal?

Scientists and Politics

Most scientists prefer to stay in their labs or out in the field collecting data for the purpose of better understanding some facet of the domain in which their research specializes. Typically, they are not all that political. But things have gotten so far out of kilter in the relationship between science and public policy that the dangers of governments continuing to do next to nothing about the converging crises of our time spurred some scientists into action. Now, their warning is getting a great deal more attention than most publications of scientific origin.

Altmetric tracks the mentioning of scientific reports in diverse media. The paper was published in 2017 in the journal BioScience, not exactly a top favorite of social media. However, Altmetric reports that ‘the warning’ ranked within the top 5% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric

The “altmetric attention score” is a measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. The score for the warning paper is 7382, which is in the 99th percentile of over 10 million research outputs Altmetric has tracked. It is the number 6 top paper published since global Altmetric records began, first of similar age. Most papers in the top 100 score below 600. In other words, people are paying attention, as well they might.

The warning paper is subtitled “A Second Notice,” because a first such warning was issued by scientists in 1992. The new Warning is short and to the point. As I mentioned above, the first notice was widely ignored. Things just kept getting worse as governments and some corporations gave obligatory lip service to “going green” in their business-as-usual operations, while dodging any serious policy questions.

Social psychologists have struggled with the difficult issues of how it is that even when confronted with overwhelming evidence, so many people avoid or deny the reality of increasing climate instabilities. Of course, confirmation bias plays a big role for the individual who is part of a social group whose ideology or world view conflicts with the facts of climate science. However, the power of corporate media, which dominate most public channels of communication, from talk radio and cable TV ‘news’ to social media, steers how the little public discussion of the topic is framed and circumscribed. The corporate state frames the issue as “controversial,” as does the propaganda of the fossil fuel industries and their political allies and agents in Congress and the White House.

Messengers of scientific fact are generally sidelined; they do not get a seat on the Sunday talk shows. Discussion of the most urgent confluence of crises humanity has ever faced is stifled. Perhaps the exposure of this powerful document via online channels may be able to draw the attention it deserves.

Resist we must. But what will that get us, really? Well, catharsis yes. However, that is clearly not enough.

Will resistance bring a slower unraveling of American Democracy? Maybe, maybe not. The deep entanglement of political institutions with the increasingly monopolistic “technosphere” is so extensive that only resistance that borders on revolution might make a dent by forcing contraction of the corporate state. Don’t hold your breath.

Will resistance bring one or two less weather weirdings next year? Probably not. That will take a lot more than resistance. Only major contraction of the techno-industrial-consumer economy coupled with accelerated deployment of low-carbon technology and economics in local communities will make much difference. That will require massive social change at every level.

Limits of Resistance

Will resistance bring a respite from the splitting of our society between the extremely rich and the rest of us? Perhaps a tiny easing, if a new Congress were to legislate big penalties for abuse of the economy by the financial sector and if a new president were to appoint a ‘hard-ass’ to enforce existing anti-trust law. Only then might the parasitic financial sector shrink some. But its penetration into political institutions is deep and pervasive. But how much of the liberal insurgency that is the #resistance just a visceral repulsion to a narcissist sociopath and how much seeks deep social change?

Would resistance bring a slight improvement in the deteriorating health of our people due to abridged access to healthcare? Not likely in the short run, since it will take a lot more than Corporate Democrats controlling Congress to overthrow the Medical Insurance Monopoly and Big Pharma dominance over the forced “markets” mediating medical care. On the other hand, maybe enough resistance could generate the momentum needed to bring on universal health care, so common in the rest of the developed world.

Well, with a lot of resistance, we might at least get a concerted effort to accelerate climate action, right? Again, Mr. Big Corp is likely to continue forcing more capital-intensive hi-tech R&D programs, not accelerated deployment of ready-to-go distributed power generation and energy conservation strategies. Serious carbon emissions reduction, which requires major contraction of the technosphere, would involve seriously greater community control of economic activity, replacing the endless intermediation within the technosphere assuring sustained central control and uninterrupted human suffering.

Something Different: Replacement, Restoration, Resilience

No, we need something very different, and we need it now. “But you don’t know what it is, do you Mister Jones?” Of course, that is a major part of the problem. We are blindly sailing into unchartered waters in a sinking ship with the captain acting the mutineer overloading a private lifeboat with bullion. “Follow the money.”

We will not survive by appealing to existing authority structures or charismatic demagogues. Nor will we survive by separating out ‘recyclables’ while buying plastic-packaged everything and investing in a hybrid car to maintain accustomed fossil-fuel levels of mobility.

Well, I can tell you one thing. What we do need even more than resistance is replacement of the global industrial-consumer economy with local ecological communities. Also we urgently need restoration of ecosystems everywhere to stop the planetary bleeding of the complex of living Earth systems we timidly call “the environment.” Only then can we achieve the resilience we desperately need. We will never get close to resilience by appealing to national politics. We must act now where we live. Of course, that is the hard part.

Resist we must, but it will be far from enough, even if Indivisible, movements like it, and street protests grow much larger. Politicians will continue dickering and taking bribes right up to the point where full-on climate collapse accelerates weird weather events, droughts, floods, large-scale crop failures, forced migrations, escalated violence and imminence of societal collapse.

I just read Chris Hedges’ report in Truthdig of his recent telephone conversation with Ralph Nader. I regularly read numerous sources of information on the politics of Trumpery and the failure of the Democratic Party to respond effectively to the crises facing the nation as Dem’s obsess over the latest Trumpist Travesty, as if wavering minority opposition and easy sarcasm were enough.So, I was surprised that Ralph Nader’s and Chris Hedges’ words hit me so hard.

I have read most of Chris Hedges’ books, so I am used to his dire descriptions of the present state of the American Empire and its domestic disasters. They are accurate and scary. I have also followed for decades Ralph Nader’s incisive expositions on the catastrophic corruption of the U.S. corporate state, and his amazing feats forcing reforms. But somehow this conversation hit far more deeply than the general realities of the “Deep State,” and the appropriation of that term by the “alt right,” such as I wrote about in a recent post here.

White nationalist propagandists such as Steve Bannon, tout the goal of taking down the “administrative state,” by which he seems to mean everything in the federal government not directly controllable by the wannabe dictator in the White House. That includes any federal program or agency that attempts to serve a public purpose rather than the interests of the American Oligarchy. But I digress.

In his conversation with Chris Hedges, Nader expressed a deep pessimism about the political prospects of the nation and the cultural decline of its people. This, after decades of stalwart defense of the public interest in myriad ways, ever dauntless. What is it that so troubles Nader, the unflappable public intellectual-activist? Hope fades for Nader and Hedges’ desire to take down the corporate state in the nation’s defense against the exploitative interests of the oligarchy under which it now operates.

The contrast is instructive. The Bannon-Trump forces would dismantle large elements of the U.S. federal government in order to eliminate operations that protect society from the devastation of neoliberal corporate economic system of extraction, production, consumption and waste. Disaster capitalism indeed! They promote utopian dreams of libertarian individualism as their cover for kleptocratic plunder of the commonwealth.

Nader and Hedges would dismantle something quite different. Their target is the totalitarian political apparatus that manages the nation-state under the thin veneer of a pseudo-democracy in the interests of corporate market liberalism and the kleptocratic oligarchy from which we desperately need to protect society. That, of course, is the far more difficult task.

It is far easier to rile up the growing segments of the population that politics has abandoned while pretending to assist those already downtrodden for generations. The declining white middle and working classes have built up resentment ever since their slide began three decades ago. Trump is exercising the classic tactics of all demagogues throughout history. And conditions were and continue to be ripe for their success.

Hedges quotes Nader’s telephone rant reflecting his despair for American democracy. The litany of converging crises is to long to repeat here. Read it there. We must face the reality he describes and find ways to overcome it. As Hedges reported, “Resistance, Nader said, must be local. First we need to organize to take back our own communities…” Neighborhood by neighborhood is where the power of the people resides. That is where our hope for the nation and our survival will be found.

With the proliferation of digital sources of “information” and technologies of communication, it seems more and more difficult to determine the difference between fact and fakery. Social media allow just about anyone to post outlandish claims and arguments without a shred of evidence. Fake evidence and false logic proliferate. If it is sensational enough or hits a sore spot for many people, a falsehood or an otherwise meaningless meme may “go viral.”

Fakery is not new, but its access to everyone has exploded with the advent of social media. Critical thinking and the weight of evidence are lost in the process. Powerful elites deny any verified fact that conflicts with their economic or political interests. Fossil-fuel industry campaigns of disinformation about carbon emissions, global warming and the extreme weather events they cause follow the model the tobacco industry used in its public relations campaigns to deny the scientific facts lung cancer caused by smoking cigarettes.

Fake News

Almost any news report today is subject to the accusation that it is “fake news.” The term’s recent growth in popularity may have originated when ‘liberals’ accused Fox News of prevarication when its stories were so biased that they did little if any justice to facts. Of course, the prevalence of propaganda has a long history. Fake news is not new, but it grew rapidly as the institutions of traditional journalism were folded into the entertainment divisions of the major networks and print newspaper sales declined.

The blatant false characterizations of “liberals” by Fox New anchors, and extreme right-wing radio “personalities” while their regular misrepresentations of facts drew mockery and ridicule from “liberal Democrats.” The fake news anchors denied the legitimacy of the “Black President,” with the lies that with the help of “The Donald” became known as “the birther movement.” At the same time, corporate interests exploit the resentments and fears of the declining white working and middle classes by funding the extreme politics and racism of the Tea Party movement, which the Republican Party embraced and began calling its “base.”

Fake President

Unsubstantiated claims, rhetorical tricks, exploitation of fears, and outright lies permeate the speech of the Fake President. Cheating and fakery characterized the entire

Image: Northern Sun

business career of the Dangerous Donald. Big lie or small, the Fake President simply repeats falsehoods in the face of publicly verified contrary facts. “Fake President”? Yes. What began as another attempt to gain more notoriety as a “celebrity,” unfortunately resonated with the anger and fears of many Americans. His open pandering to racism, misogyny, and hate brought the neo-Nazis and white nationalists out into the open.

“The system” had destroyed the aspirations of middle and working class white folks through job outsourcing, cultural marginalization, and political indifference. Corporate Democrats and Republicans both contributed to forming the corporate state against the interests of citizens. Each blamed the other for the plight of ordinary people; both were guilty of betraying the people while pandering to wealthy corporate donors. Trumpery arose by effectively exploiting the political chaos of fake democracy.

Fake Congress

Everyone knows that the Congress operates to serve the interests of the biggest corporations and wealthiest individuals, not the people. Senators and Representatives feign concern for the people while taking huge bribes in the form of “campaign contributions.” The Supreme Court abetted their corruption by the fakery of defining corporations as “persons” and allowing unlimited corporate money to influence

Senator Inhofe faking climate denial, with the chance of a snowball in Congress. Washington Post photo.

elections. The Republican Party effectively used unfettered funding to influence elections by various forms of voter suppression and propaganda. They ruthlessly gerrymandered minority voting groups out of electoral influence. Russian bots and trolls abetted the chaos of fakery.

The Democratic Party elite, dependent on large corporate and Wall Street funding, stuck with Hillary, the corporatist candidate, suppressing the booming popularity of Bernie, the independent bearer of the old FDR-liberal policies. The desire of many democrats for a female candidate – the logical follow-up to the Black President – conflicted with the resistance to the corporatist party elite. Resentment resulted in many not voting and some even voting for the Fake Outsider, Trump, the master of demagoguery and economic exploitation.

Fake Experience

However, politics is not everything. It is merely a core driver of the fakery of modern life itself. Fake experience proliferates, from fake adventure (theme parks, staged ‘adventure’ vacations, and video games), from fake meaning in consumerism to fake

The fakery of suburban life, for those who can still afford it, reflects a trained incapacity to live beyond the illusions of the fake domination of nature that characterizes the consumer culture. The real world consists of the complex of ecosystems upon which all of humanity depends, but few recognize for its survival importance. Most remain insulated from real experience.

Revenge of Reality

It is all coming to a head. Reality has a way of eventually forcing itself upon us. We have lost our fake control of our environment, as the laws of physics, chemistry, and bio-systems continue to rule the material world from which we have alienated ourselves.

Growing numbers of people have become aware of their dissociation from reality. They realize at a gut level that the fake realities that digital technology generates are no substitute for the feeling of a warm breeze on a spring day. Reality impinges on illusion.

Growing numbers of IT geeks now carry physical notebooks to write in. Music lovers return to the analog sounds of vinyl records and live music. Children are discovering actual toys again. Who needs a “driverless car”? Smartphones, texting (while not driving), and Facebook are far from disappearing. Nevertheless, reality will continue to insert itself into our abstracted lives and disrupt our digital and social illusions. That is when the denial of reality will dissipate and a democracy grounded in ecological reality will return.